Big Blue has inspired some purchases

[Schraddel]

It looks alike the Chinamen have copied "Green" tractors. Paint the wheels of the green one yellow and you will know what i mean.
The idea of N Scale models and the scenery is


Lutz

[TMo]

Lutz,

   You're right!  I had John Deere in mind when I painted the green one, and I knew I should include some yellow paint somewhere....  I'll get into that at some point today.  I think the Red one was going to be an International Harvester/Case unit.

[TMo]

Amazing what a little yellow paint can do!  Thanks Lutz!

   

[TMo]

  Sorry, double tap.

[tompm]

The tractor looks great as does the scenery. You are right. It does not take much to make a model stand out.

[TMo]

I have a coworker who had dreams of a Reading RR layout, having grown up in the area.  He collected some HO rolling stock, some track, some structures, a transformer, a couple of locomotives.  

After years of moving the boxed items around his basement, he came to realization that it was never going to happen.  This is the story of many, many potential model railroaders.  Big plans, fits and starts, dumpster.

He did sell his locomotives and some other items on ebay and facebook marketplace but came to the realization he wasn't really even going to break even.

I've shown him some of my work, so he knows what and when I model.  A box appeared on my desk this week.  There were some decent items that I was interested in - an unassembled box car kit, a high cube Conrail box car, a set of 3 Bev Bel coal hoppers, some of Reading's last box cars (Mantua's, Tyco, etc.).  Except for the stuff I was interested in, truck mounted couplers.  Not a lot of quality, but decent quantity.  I figured if I didn't bite, the stuff was going to end up in the trash (which is probably the appropriate place for some of it).

When I offered to buy the items I was interested in.... you guessed it - he said it was a package deal.  All or nothing.

And, you probably realize by now, I now have a box of rolling stock under my desk, and there's less cash in my wallet.  I think of it as a pre-Christmas gift...

Over the next few months my plan is to retrofit some of this stuff and bring a little delight to my coworker, who has already said he wants to see some of his stuff running on my layout.  (No pressure, Todd....).  I'd like to try to upgrade some of these cars.  There are a lot of pooh-poohers out there who cringe and head for the can when you utter Life-Like, Tyco, AHM in the same sentence, and I get it.  Today's rolling stock is really very nice, but it comes at significant cost - you get what you pay for.  There is a fringe out there that actually enjoys trying to make the clunkers somewhat believable and operating well, and I'm going to give that a try with some of these items in this box under my desk.

Anyway, more to follow - I'll periodically post something here regarding the un-magic box.  Heck, the worst thing that could happen is that some of this stuff ends up in the dumpster - it was probably going to end up there anyway....

[TMo]

Well, one of those Reading boxcars was not just a boxcar.  It was an infamous Tyco "Electronic Sound of Steam in 50' box car".  In the age prior to DCC and sound controllers, Tyco had a boxcar with a 9-volt battery in it to make a "chug" sound each time one of the wheel sets on the boxcar made a rotation.  Faster you pull it, the more frequent you hear the chug.  I think they were all Baltimore and Ohio boxcars, but this one has Reading paint.  Inside's blue though, which is a puzzler.

   

As I alluded to in the last post, I probably paid a little more than I wanted for this box of stuff, so to recoup some of my hard earned scheckels, I put this vintage piece up for sale on ebay here: HO ELECTRONIC "SOUND OF STEAM IN 50-foot" BOXCAR TYCO 957, READING body | eBay

[TMo]

Well, that electronic marvel doesn't have any bids yet, but I've moved on to other items in the box.  There were four box cars with body-mounted Kadee style couplers.  The first was a C&BT Shops AAR 40' car in a decent looking Reading green.  There was also what looks to be an Athearn high-cube 40' Conrail boxcar that was pretty nice, and the other two were Mantua 50' Reading cars in a glaring sea-foam green.  I've been trying to research if the Reading maybe bought some Penn Central or New York Central plug door box cars, but I have not come across any in this color.  What to do?

   

While I'm pondering, it was time to hit all of the surfaces with X-21 Flat base mixed with alcohol.  Once it was dry, I brushed the white refuse from each surface.

   

I also took off the trucks and wheelsets and painted and distressed those with some flat acrylics.


Just for fun I'm going to try the RIT dye treatment like I did with the Reading loco on the sea foam units.  The color difference was much smaller in that case, so I'm thinking that it isn't going to make the kind of difference I want.  In any case, both of these cars have the same road number.  I could get Reading decals and change that, but I've decided that at least one of these is going to be a Conrail patch out after the weathering and major painting is done.  The high cube already has Conrail logos, so I'm hypothesizing that the whole thing hit the spray booth before the decals went on, and that one is not going to get more than road wash treatments.  Not so the other three....  more to follow.

[TMo]

Gave the two 40' boxcars weathering treatments after dusting off the X-21.  The Conrail high cube got a dose of black wash and then I pulled the wash off of the Conrail decals, while the Reading AAR got a black wash followed by good dose of rust on all of the rivets as well as a full-on rust and grime treatment on the roof and then some road spray on the lower sections.  Certainly aren't the boxcars they were yesterday!

   

The Reading kit is a wobbler.  One of the wheelset holes had to be filed open to go over the mating cylinder on the car, and I suspect some further opening up is needed.  Could just be the cheap wheelsets and might be the motivation to buy some decent stuff using my gift certificates to modeltrainstuff.com that I received under the tree.

The sea foam 50-footers are receiving many coats of the dark green wash, and I think it's beginning to make a difference, but pictures won't be forthcoming on those for a few hours.

[Charlie B]

Todd, keep in mind the wheels with barbet bearings were always coated in oil so they seldom rusted on the outside. The dirt and oil would build up to a hard cake.
Charlie          

[TMo]

Thanks for the education, Charlie. I'll get the brushes back out!

[TMo]

And the Kartrak decals! That picture of the hopper jogged that memory - I need to spend an afternoon poised over the decal reservoir. 3 of the Reading hoppers in the box are Bev-Bel 2-bays just like the one in the lower picture. I will get to them after the box cars.

[TMo]

Spent the afternoon on my day off with Kartrak decals, gray paint, wheelsets, etc.  I may have some more Barbet's to get to in the future, but everything out on the layout currently has been adjusted.

The green dye experiment is a dud for these two sea foam box cars.  I've decided on a different tact for both of these.  

One of the other box cars was a Life Like Reading XMLF box car that has a more prototypical paint scheme.  

   

Unfortunately the chassis was for truck-mounted horn hook couplers.  So, I took the best of each car - the Mantua chassis and the Life Like car body.  However, the chassis was a tad bit smaller than the body.  I built a receiving frame (a piece of thick styrene located in the middle of the car just above where the chassis would sit) and glued it in the body.  Drilled two holes for small screws in the chassis that line up with holes in the receiving frame and now the chassis is firmly mounted in the carbody but can be removed.  Now it's time to weather that car.

   

The other Mantua sea-green boxcar received a paintout over anything Reading on the car inspired by this one here (CR 147332 - RDG Class XMe | Conrail Photo Archive (thecrhs.org)).  I plan on covering the paintout areas and weathering the remainder of the car and then adding white "CR" decals and an appropriate road number.

   

[Amalynn]

I wish there were more people willing to take on the challenge of making these work because they are really cool little projects it seems.

[TMo]

This afternoon was spent with paintbrushes, decals, makeup brushes, and washes to suitably (or maybe unsuitably for many people's taste) weather these two boxcars.  (Yeah, the rust treatment on the un-patched Reading unit is probably on the excessive side - but I'll give it a few days and I can always tone it down). They now fit in quite well with my Conrail consist of covered hoppers and boxcars.  I couldn't find an exact equivalent (turns out it's a Reading RBLa (modified and stretched 40' XMy) for the patched-out unit, so I made up a Conrail number for this car (230635) and decaled it accordingly. 

   

I think that does it for the boxcars in that box.  The two that remain aren't worth much time or effort.  

There are three 2-bay Reading hopper cars that just need couplers which will leave me with 1 gondola and 4 more hoppers (1 Tyco, some Life Like, a couple of unknowns), none of which deserve much more than a bargain bin ebay sale.  All in all, the projects that I got out to the box have been a good Christmas vacation deviation from normal.